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Gym in California Partly Powered by Human Energy

At Sacramento Eco Fitness and other gyms around the world, special equipment manufactured by SportsArt harnesses human energy to generate electricity.

Photo: SportsArt Imagine going to a gym where you not only burn calories but also generate power—just by working out. That’s the case at Sacramento Eco Fitness, in Sacramento, California, where cycling classes generate electricity that helps power the building.

The fitness center has installed Eco-Powr stationary bikes manufactured by SportsArt, which also offers electricity-generating elliptical machines and non-motorized treadmills. A microinverter in the equipment sends power back through the electrical cord, so any devices on the same circuit can consume energy produced by the equipment.

Sacramento Eco Fitness stores its power in a battery so that it can be distributed throughout the building during peak usage hours.

So how much energy is actually being generated? According to a calculator developed by SportsArt, using 12 stationary bikes for an hour a day would produce approximately 19 kWh over the course of a year. The average U.S. home consumes 10,766 kWh per year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Although the electrical output might not seem like much, the price of the equipment is comparable to that of non-electricity-generating brands, according to SportsArt.

Between the Eco-Powr cycles and photovoltaics (PV) on the roof, Sacramento Eco Fitness has reduced its electricity bill from $680 to $30 per month.